In the weeks and days before Black Friday comes, there’s a sense of excitement and anticipation. Shoppers crowd the stores hoping for the year’s best deals. Retailers stock the shelves hoping for the year’s best bottom line.

Historians date Black Friday’s origins to somewhere between the late 1950s and mid-1960s. Merchants wanted to kick the holiday shopping season off in a big way, and offered deep discounts to lure customers on the day after Thanksgiving.

But how did one of the biggest shopping days of the year come to be called “Black Friday?”

There’s a common belief that the name comes from retailers who were able to move their ledgers from “red” ink, which showed a loss, to “black” ink, which showed a profit. That origin story, however, can be traced to savvy marketers who, in the 1980s, wanted to put a positive spin on a term that had negative origins.

In fact, in 2009, a linguist named Bonnie Taylor-Blake told The American Dialect society about an article called “Tips to Good Human Relations for Factory Executives.” In the 1951 piece, an exasperated editor named M.J. Murphy wrote: “ ‘Friday-after-Thanksgiving-it is’ is a disease second only to the bubonic plague in its effects. At least that’s the feeling of those who have to get production out, when the ‘Black Friday’ comes along. The shop may be half empty, but every absentee was sick — and can prove it.”

While that explanation sounds plausible, it doesn’t seem like the term caught on — at least until the 1960s. The annual Army-Navy football game was usually played the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Philadelphia. Pre-game traffic coupled with holiday sales led to headaches for the Philadelphia Police Department. Frustrated, officers apparently started to call the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday,” hoping the term would unnerve would-be shoppers so much they’d stay home.

It’s a tactic that doesn’t seem to have worked very well: The National Retail Federation expects 140 million holiday deal seekers to hit Thanksgiving weekend sales online and in stores this year.

If you plan to be one of them — or even if you don’t — Faulkner Chevrolet General Sales Manager Brian Price encourages you to stop by the dealership on Stoke Park Road in Bethlehem. Faulkner is having its own Black Friday specials, but you don’t need to wait until the day after Thanksgiving — the deals and giveaways start today.

In addition, Faulkner is offering a zero-percent annual percentage rate for qualified buyers, $1,000 purchase bonus cash and no monthly payments until next year on most of their in-stock vehicles. Price says that includes the award-winning 2014 Silverado; 2014 Cruze; 2015 Malibu; 2015 Traverse and 2015 Equinox.

“The energy in the dealership has been electric as we’re also giving away one 42-inch LED flat-screen TV every week for the next five weeks in addition to Christmas trees, Phantoms hockey tickets and more,” he says.